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We had scarcely arrived at the right of Fort de Vaux, on the slope of the
ravine, when there came an unprecedented bombardment of twelve hours.

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Alone, in
a sort of dugout without walls, I pass twelve hours of agony, believing that it
is the end. The soil is torn up, covered with fresh earth by enormous
explosions.

In front of us are not less than 1,200 guns of 240, 305, 380, and
420 calibre, which spit ceaselessly and all together, in these days of
preparation for attack. These explosions stupefy the brain; you feel as if your
entrails were being torn out, your heart twisted and wrenched; the shock seems
to dismember your whole body And then the wounded, the corpses!

Never had I seen such horror, such hell. I felt that I would give everything if
only this would stop long enough to clear my brain. Twelve hours alone,
motionless, exposed, and no chance to risk a leap to another place, so closely
did the fragments of shell and rock fall in hail all day long.

At last, with
night, this diminished a little. I can go on into the woods! The shells still
burst all around us, but their infernal din no longer makes any impression on
me - a queer trait of the human temperament.

After that we are lodged in fortified
caves where we pass five days in seclusion, piled on top of each other, without
being able to lie down.

I bury three comrades in a shell-hole. We are without water, and, with hands
that have just touched the poor mangled limbs, we eat as if nothing were wrong.

We are taken back for two days into a tunnel where the
lachrymal shells make us
weep. Swiftly we put on our masks. The next day, at the moment of taking supper
and retiring to rest, we are hastily called into rank; that's it - we are going to
the motion-picture show.

We pass through an infernal barrage fire that cracks
red all around in the dark. We run with all speed, in spite of our knapsacks,
into the smother of broken branches that used to be a forest. Scarcely have we
left a hole or a ditch when shells as big as a frying pan fall on the spot.

We
are laid flat by one that bursts a few yards away. So many of them fall at one
time that we no longer pay any attention to them. We tumble into a ravine which
we have named Death Ravine. That race over shell-swept, open country, without
trenches, we shall long remember.

At last we enter the village - without suspecting that the Germans are there! The
commanding officer scatters us along the steep hill to the left and says : "Dig
holes, quickly; the Boches are forty yards away!"

We laugh and do not believe
him; immediately, cries, rifle shots in the village; our men are freeing our
Colonel and Captain, who were already prisoners. Impossible! Then there are no
more Frenchmen there? In two minutes the village is surrounded, while the German
batteries get a rude jolt.

It was time! All night long you hear tools digging
from one end to the other; trenches are being made in haste, but secretly. After
that there is a wall, and the Germans will advance no further.

The next morning a formidable
rumour - the Boches are coming up to assault Fort de
Vaux. The newspapers have told the facts; our 75's firing for six hours, the
German bodies piling up in heaps. Horrible! but we applauded. Everybody went out
of the trenches to look. The Yser, said the veterans, was nothing beside this
massacre.

That time I saw Germans fleeing like madmen. The next day, the same thing over
again; they have the cynicism to mount a battery on the slope; the German chiefs
must be hangmen to hurl their troops to death that way in masses and in broad
daylight.

All afternoon, a maximum bombardment; a wood is razed, a hill ravaged
with shell-holes.

It is maddening; continuous salvos of "big chariots"; one sees the 380's and
420's falling; a continuous cloud of smoke everywhere. Trees leap into air like
wisps of straw; it is an unheard-of spectacle. It is enough to make you lose
your head, yet we patiently wait for the outcome.

The barrage fire cuts our communication with the rear, literally barring off the
isthmus of Death Ravine. If the attacks on our wings succeed, our two regiments
are prisoners, hemmed in, but the veterans (fathers of families) declare that we
shall not be taken alive, that we will all fight till we die. It is sublime.

"Keep up your courage, coolness, and morale, boys, and we will drive them back
in good time."

It is magnificent to see that our last recourse is a matter of sheer will;
despite this monstrous machinery of modern war, a little moral effort, a will
twenty years old that refuses to weaken, suffices to frustrate the offensive!

The rifles do not shoot enough, but we have machine guns, the bayonet, and we
have vowed that they shall not pass. Twenty times the alarm is given; along the
hillside one sees the hands gripping the rifles; the eyes are a little wild, but
show an energy that refuses to give way.

Suddenly it is already night. A sentinel runs up to the outposts: "There they
are! Shoot!"

A whole section shoots. But are the outposts driven in? Nobody knows. I take my
rifle to go and see. I do not catch a ball. I find the sentinels flat on their
faces in their holes, and run to the rear gesticulating and crying out orders to
cease firing.

The men obey. I return to the front, and soon, a hundred yards
away, I see a bush scintillate with a rapid line of fire. This time it is they. Ta-ca-ta-ca, bzzibzzi.

I hold my fire until they approach, but the welcome
evidently does not please them, for they tumble back over the ridge, leaving
some men behind. One wounded cries, "Frantchmen!"

I am drunk, mad. Something moves in the bushes to the right; I bound forward
with set bayonet. It is my brave sergeant, who has been out to see whether the
Boches have all run away.

These are truly the most interesting moments of war;
no longer the waiting, the anguish of bombardment, but the thrill of a free
march into a glorious unknown - oh, that intoxication! I sing the "Marseillaise,"
the boys jubilate, all the successive attacks have failed. After this evening
the offensive is going to slacken for several days.

The next day we are relieved at
last. Another race with death, this time with broad daylight shining upon
the horrible chaos, the innumerable dead, and a few wounded here and there.

Oh! those mangled bodies, still
unburied, abandoned for the moment. The danger excites us. A shell
falls squarely among us, jarring us and bathing us in flame. My knapsack
gets a sliver of shell; I am not touched; it is a miracle.

In the evening we arrive at the
river ford, and have another race. The next day, at Verdun, the Germans
are still shelling us at the moment when we mount the auto trucks.

In the course of all these
actions our losses certainly have been high, but they are nothing compared with
the frightful and unimaginable hecatomb of Germans I have witnessed.